At the end of 2023, the question arises about the achievements and failures at the level of each government sector, especially in the education sector, which has stolen the spotlight for three months under the weight of unprecedented strikes waged by men and women in education. This fact alone is sufficient to issue a negative judgment on the 2023 harvest in the national education sector, but scientific integrity requires conducting an objective assessment from the angles of suitability, effectiveness and efficiency, taking into account the context that characterizes education reform since the approval of the reform reference in 2015 represented by the Strategic Vision 2030 and its transformation into a binding legal reference. It was embodied in Framework Law 51.17, which was approved by Parliament in 2019. This evaluation goes beyond comparing what was accomplished with what was committed to in the road map because the latter is supposed to constitute a procedural stage on the path to activating the strategic vision. But even if we limit ourselves to evaluating the extent of implementation of the road map while we are in the middle of the government term, we find that its three goals are on a declining trend, such that the percentage of those controlling basic learning has decreased to less than 20 percent, the general level of academic achievement has declined by about 20 points, and the number of those who have dropped out of school has increased. To reach 350 thousand after recording 334 thousand last year. School life activities have been suspended since last May due to the general strike in the education sector. The comprehensive evaluation we conducted of government work in the field of education during the year 2023 made it possible to record a set of conclusions.

• Four years after its issuance and publication in the Official Gazette, Framework Law No. 51-17 relating to education, training and scientific research has not yet found its way into application in Moroccan schools in a manner that takes into account the legal and regulatory requirements in force in the field of implementing the framework laws.
• Before July 2021, five regulatory texts were issued in the form of decrees, perhaps the most important of which was the decree of the Permanent Program Committee, but they have not yet entered into application. Also, in some draft laws, the Supreme Council for Education, Training and Scientific Research expressed its opinion, but they were returned to it again to express new opinions, in a clear waste of legislative time and in a precedent in dealing with the opinions of constitutional institutions, such that for the first time the same body is requesting an opinion on the same issue from the same institution.
• The National Committee to track and keep up with the reform of the education, training and scientific research system, which was created to be under the supervision of the Prime Minister, is considered the basic mechanism for achieving compatibility of public policy with the framework law. This mechanism, which is supposed to meet at least twice a year, has not met for two years without the government explaining the reasons for this.
• The framework law set a number of deadlines for achieving a set of requirements, but the lack of issuance of the necessary legislative and regulatory texts for its implementation makes meeting these deadlines impossible. However, focusing on the axis of educational action, which consists of the trilogy of learner, teacher, and school, which is the subject of public policy in the national education sector, can be considered a strategy that would mobilize educational actors and concerned parties around the educational institution, provided that attention is paid to strengthening the legislative and regulatory framework because it is the guarantor of the institutionalization and sustainability of reform.
• The rate of increase in the National Index for Educational Development recorded in the period 2015-2018, although it was weak and did not exceed 2.3 points at that time, declined alarmingly to 0.6 points, which led to a very slight development in the index, which moved from 53.5% to 54.1%. This pace of progress is too low to guarantee that the goals set by the Vision will be achieved in the eight years until the 2030 deadline.
• Managing flows at the expense of managing the quality of learning has led to the creation of a multi-level educational system that does not all meet the requirements of the minimum quality, and those with a level that exceeds this limit remain limited to certain social classes.
• Implementing linguistic alternation outside the controls stipulated in the framework law has led to the dominance of the French language over the official languages ​​and portends a decline in the quality of education in the medium and long term.
• The confused dealing with the issue of “contract professors” and with the basic system for men and women in education, which was not based on a frame of reference for jobs and competencies as required by the framework law, resulted in unprecedented tension within educational institutions, translated into the form of strikes and sit-ins that negatively affected the normal course of study and achievement. For male and female students, our educational system will suffer from it in the medium and perhaps long term.
• The Ministry of National Education has begun implementing an ambitious program for basic training for teachers, based on a bachelor’s degree in education and a qualifying year in regional centers for education and training professions, in addition to a training year in educational institutions. This program would achieve the required quality at the training level if the conditions for competent trainers, effective pedagogical support and improvement of the conditions for practicing the profession are met in all institutions, especially those in the rural area and in difficult areas.
• The education and training system needs regular evaluation based on standards and indicators related to the system’s outputs, inputs, and processes, not only to capture a picture at a specific time of its quality, but especially to identify the problems it suffers from and monitor the gains in order to strengthen them. Although the Supreme Council for Education, Training and Scientific Research has a scientific mechanism to do this, it has not done so since its new term in clear abandonment of its evaluative tasks.
• The need for a strong national evaluation system, which enables the provision of objective and regular information about students’ school gains and the performance of institutions, and the investment of the results of national and international evaluations in order to identify the factors that explain the weakness of these results, and to rely on them in order to develop the performance of the education and training system.
• Decentralization remains far from being at the level of effectiveness required, at least at the level of applying the autonomous competencies delegated to the territorial communities, pending the availability of conditions for applying the joint competencies and thinking about transferring some of the competencies related to education to the regional and regional levels of the territorial organization of the Kingdom.
• The weakness of decision-making authority within the public school, as it is the appropriate management framework closest to the field, does not help enhance the quality of education, especially in light of the adoption of a national strategy for the institution’s project, which constituted a qualitative leap in the course of the system, but it collided with institutional and legal obstacles that did not give any margin of independence for the institutions. Educational.
• We do not have an integrated curriculum based on a national frame of reference, and since the issuance of the framework law for education that institutionalized the Permanent Committee for Programs, educational public opinion is still waiting for it to come into existence in order to open major workshops for a radical review of the curriculum on scientific foundations and with a participatory logic.
• At the level of elementary education, there is a speed at the level of generalization that raises the problem of quality, especially in unstructured elementary education, in which the minimum conditions for appropriate elementary education are not met in terms of the teaching staff, the resources used, the infrastructure, or even the programs. The main obstacle to achieving quality in primary education remains the training of nannies and educators and providing them with appropriate conditions to perform their duties.
• The poor profitability of our educational system contributes to wasting about a quarter of the budget allocated to education, which requires supporting the increase in the budget with practical measures to improve the system’s profitability.

The system of education, training and scientific research has received increasing attention from the state since education became, about a quarter of a century ago, the second national issue after territorial integrity. This care was evident at the strategic level by making long-term foresight one of the components of thinking in the system, which enabled our country to have a comprehensive and integrated strategic vision that set the major directions for education over a period extending to 15 years. This interest in legally immunizing these strategic choices was also culminated in the issuance of Framework Law 51.17. Thus, the state’s general policy in the field of education, training and scientific research is clearly defined, and the legal guarantee for transforming it into an effective public policy is available. These are two basic pillars for putting the education reform train on the right track. In addition, the strategic vision 2015-2030, which embodies the reference for this reform, is fully consistent with the international vision for developing education represented in the fourth goal of the United Nations Sustainable Development Programme, and with the outcomes of the Education Transformation Summit organized by the United Nations in September 2023.